


Covenant

by allthegoodnamesaretakendammit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Trust Issues, Vampire AU, love and loss of humanity, power differential, the expected amount of blood and such, the vampire equivalent of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 11:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11896578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthegoodnamesaretakendammit/pseuds/allthegoodnamesaretakendammit
Summary: Skye is a fledgling vampire with a deadbeat Sire and trust issues a mile long. Coulson just wants to make it better, and also maybe make her his eternal bride.





	Covenant

 

Skye's transition into becoming a creature of the night isn't exactly what you'd call smooth. Or intentional, for that matter.

One minute, she's enjoying an early Thursday evening in the park, flirting with the guy on the other end of the bench reading a copy of _Good Omens_. And the next, his teeth are buried in her neck and she's yanking on his hair hard enough to pull it out and screaming for him to stop, stop, why won't anybody stop him--

 

*

 

When she wakes, her whole left side is tacky with drying blood and the setting sun paints the guy's face an overdone red as he gasps, "Fuck, oh man, I'm sorry. I swear, I didn't mean to--"

"Why am I cold?" He stares back at her, swept into silence. She wants to shake him, to throttle him until he explains it to her. "Why am I cold? Why am I so _goddamn cold?_ "

 

*

 

Skye promptly spends the next two weeks starving herself in her van, too on-edge to visit the public library or her favorite café. What if they take one look at her and know exactly what she's become? Librarians and baristas don't tend to have that kind of supernatural acuity, but still. She's enjoyed enough rejection in her life already, thanks.

It's on day thirteen of her hunger strike when there is a genteel knock on the door of her van. It comes right at the stroke of midnight, when Skye is watching the blue-green numbers change on the radio display. She's not really sure what she expected to see when she popped the door open, but it definitely wasn't some classy motherfucker she's never seen before with thinning brown hair and an impeccable suit.

If anything could be said to give him away, it's his smile--like he knows things you don't, but that you might learn if you stick around for another couple of centuries and pay close attention. He's old, is what she's saying. Older than anybody she's ever met; older than the oldest nuns administering communion at the orphanage; older even than the crone who runs the library with an iron fist.

"Hello, Skye," he says with that smile. "May I come in?"

She considers slamming the door in his face. And then she thinks: what the fuck else does she have to lose? You know, now that her humanity is out of the equation. So she sighs and says, "Come on in." Skye throws herself onto the inflatable bed and watches him fold himself into the van. "Behold," she flings her arm put to gesture at all before him, "my palace."

He sits himself down between a pile of laundry and a stack of old mix CDs and, somehow, manages to look dapper while doing it. "Thank you for allowing me to be here." And God, if he doesn't sound like he means it. "My name is Phil Coulson."

"Skye," she offers, even though it's clearly redundant, and gives him a little wave of hello.

The smile lines around his eyes crease deeper and he folds his hands in front him, the way people do when they're about to negotiate something important. "It may comfort you to know," he says, "that there are protocols for this."

"What? For midnight visits from mysterious strangers?"

"No. For fledglings with Sires that can't or won't take responsibility." There is silence then, as deep as the silence Skye has felt in her own chest for the past twelve nights. And then he breaks it, saying, "I've been made to understand that you have yet to feed."

"Nope," she answers, popping the _P._

"I'm sure you're already aware that you require blood to survive. It will only hurt you more to--"

"I'm not _hurting myself_. I'm--" She waves a hand in the air. "Boycotting my own vampirism."

He frowns and asks, not unkindly, "Is there anyone in your life who you've told? Anyone you can turn to for help?"

"Never has been," she answers, slouching in her seat and saying it like it costs her nothing.

He looks at her, then, with grave eyes. "In that case, I hope you’ll accept my help." _And_  I  _wish I wasn't a blood-sucking, bottom-feeding leech on two legs._  She thinks it so loudly, telepaths in Cambodia may have heard it. But all he hears her say is, "And what will I owe you, if I do?"

"This is city is under my protection. My responsibility supersedes your Sire's. You? Owe me nothing. I, on the other hand, owe you all that you may require."

"What? Just out of the goodness of your heart?"

"Well, if charity makes you uncomfortable, I don't mind telling you that we could use someone with your skills." Huh. So even big bad daddy vamps need a hacker every once in awhile. She stares at her scratched-up roof, listening to the radio, where Blue Öyster Cult had been playing softly to carry her through the sleepless night. It occurs to her, all over again, that every night will be a sleepless night from now on. She’ll never get have that weird dream about making out with JFK ever again. "Skye," Coulson says. "You will die if you don't take steps to replenish yourself."

"Why do you _care?"_ she accuses because, Christ, if she didn't have trust issues before, she definitely does now.

"We have to look out for one another. Not because we're inherently better or worse than any other creature, but simply because no one else will."

"So, what? You want me to give in? You want me to _feed?"_

"I want you," he says, reaching out to take her hand between his, "to  _live_." The way he says it, there's nothing counter-intuitive to it at all.

 

*

 

As it turns out, Skye has options. The menu includes: homegrown livestock to feed from without killing, wild rabbits and foxes to drain if needed, a fridge full of blood packets from the Red Cross, willing human donors who are there for the thrill, and, failing all of that, a couple of witches who can cook up a decent substitute for blood with the right ingredients and lunar phase.

Out of a lifelong love of still-mooing burgers and bloody steaks, Skye opts for one of Coulson's homegrown cattle. Maybe the flavor will at least be a little familiar?

The whole experience is pretty weird, though. She drives them out to the very edge of town and up to his estate, with him giving directions from the navigator's seat and paying no mind to how her little hula girl judders obnoxiously as they roll over the gravel road. He calmly guides her through the back entrance and up to a big white barn, still lit up by lamps and the light pollution hovering on the horizon. When she parks, there are honest to God chickens strutting across the grass, and Skye can feel something deep within her clench in anticipation as she hears mooing from inside the barn.

Coulson leads her inside, the earthy smell of animals and hay enveloping them as her eyes lock onto the heifer milling between stalls. Coulson's hand, heavy and broad, comes down on her shoulder and he says, "It's alright, Skye. Let it happen." The next thing she knows, she has knives in her mouth and there is blood everywhere, and she can feel the cow's heartbeat under her palm, on her tongue, in her heart. She sighs into it, relaxing in spite of herself as she sips. It’s better than food, better than liquor, better than--anything, really. She has a fleeting thought that maybe, just _maybe_ , she can understand why the Ass-Wipe Who Shall Not Be Named bit a rando in the park and couldn't be bothered to stop until there was nothing left to drink.

It tastes like good, hearty, necessary things--and, sadly, nothing like actual beef.

She's warm, and it's not the secondhand warm of the bus seat someone else just vacated, either. It's genuine heat, curling in her belly and tingling in her toes and making her feel real again. When she finally has the presence of mind to realize that she's full, she stops slurping and absently, instinctively licks the two fang marks goring up the cow's brown coat. The holes stitch themselves up like magic, mending within seconds. She has magic spit now, holy shit. She wipes a hand across her mouth and it comes away covered in blood. It's not even a little bit gross. She licks it off her fingers, loving it's texture, it's warmth. How had she ever taken being _warm_  for granted?

She pats the cow on the flank and says, "Thanks, Bessie." The cow gives her a disgruntled look and shuffles off on wobbly legs. Maybe she took a little more than she'd thought.

When she turns back to Coulson, he’s examining her blood-smeared clothes and sticky face approvingly. She has the strangest urge to cuddle with him, to nuzzle into his chest and let him hold her. Until proven otherwise, she's going to blame it on the post-feeding euphoria. "I found my bliss," she informs him.

"Good," he says. "Now let's see if we can't find you a home."

 

*

 

After washing off a bit at the barn sink, Skye hops back into the van and they make their way up the hill to Coulson’s house. It seems so obvious, now, how tense she'd been on the ride here--fingers tight on the steering wheel, head throbbing with fatigue while her insides felt emptier and emptier as the hours passed. Presently, she's got one loose hand on the wheel and the other undoing the top button on her flannel, the summer heat finally registering with her again now that she's got enough life in her to notice it. It seems to her that Coulson is making a concerted effort not to stare--at her cleavage or her practically post-coital relaxation or any of it. What a gentleman.

His place is a big, well-lit pale blue house that seems very welcoming against the backdrop of the dark countryside. She has excellent night-vision these days, so it barely takes her any time to throw some clothes and toiletries into a bag in the dark and then lock the van. When he holds open the front door for her, the first thing that she notices is the three-storied stairwell taking up the main entryway. The second thing she notices is--"Where's all the red curtains and whips and chains?"

"That's all in the drawing room." She literally can't even tell if he's kidding. And she doesn’t get to find out, either, because he ushers her into the living room, a wide space full of long couches and comfy-looking recliners. She takes a black couch low to the ground, hoping she won’t stain it as much. Her clothing is feeling damp and distinctly crusty by turns. She probably should have changed in the van… but part of her kind of likes wearing her meal like this. It prolongs the satisfaction of it, reassures her that the warmth within her isn’t her imagination. Coulson settles into the armchair across from her, looking perfectly at ease sitting with a blood-covered stranger in his living room at 2AM. Maybe he does this kind of thing all the time. Just another Wednesday evening for the local vampire lord.

“So,” she begins, feeling agreeable enough to start asking difficult questions again. “How did you find out about me?” But really, what she means is: _how the fuck did you find out that I got bit, whether or not I’d fed, what my name is, where I live, and what my extremely illegal profession is._

“FitzSimmons,” he answers.

“Gazuntite.” There's that wry amusement creeping into his face again, before he schools it back into something more polite and explains that his pet witches are named Fitz and Simmons and that they've got crystals and runes stones for days. “So you didn’t, like, blackmail somebody or stalk me?”

“No. That would be unethical,” he says, seeming perfectly aware that the methods he’d used were still far from conventional.

“Okay, but… how did you know to go looking in the first place?” Coulson sighs, and she immediately knows that she is going to loathe the answer.

“Your Sire reported that he had accidentally turned a girl of your height and general appearance,” he admits.

"Fucking _Miles,_ " she hisses. The lack of sleep had multiplied the past two weeks infinitely. Plenty of time to build up a decent grudge.

He nods and concludes, “He was still wearing a considerable amount of your blood when he came to inform us of the event. With a sample of that, all it took were a few locating spells.”

She can feel her jaw tightening, her heart twisting in rage. Coulson tells her, “The vast majority of people who are drained die instantly. It takes enormous willpower and strength to survive a turning where a Sire’s blood is not offered, or so the thinking goes.” If possible, her desire to rip Miles’ head from his shoulders intensifies.

“Skye, I know that none of this is something that you asked for.” He leans forward to catch her eye, using his most reasonable tone of voice. “But like I said, there are protocols for this. You don’t have to have a Sire in your fledgling years, but it greatly increases your chances of survival to have one. I would be more than willing to become your Sire, if you decided you wanted that. All it would require is for you to drink my blood and live here until you feel like you have a handle on your new instincts, your new life. If you were comfortable with it, I would also drink from you--” Skye snarls. Full-tilt _snarls_  at him, the sound scraped out of her throat and accompanied by her fangs scything out of her gums. She immediately shies back, hand over her too-toothy mouth, startled by the scary noises that she can apparently make now. Coulson looks at her, eyebrows raised.

"Have you practiced that?" She shakes her head, mute with shock. "Because really, that was very good. Were I any younger, it would have intimidated me considerably." She's basically a monster. She could unsettle _other monsters,_ that's how monstrous she is. A swipe at her brimming eyes turns her fingertips red. She cries  _blood_  now. How metal is that?

“I’m sorry that I unsettled you. I just want you to know that it’s an option.” He plucks the pocket square from his suit and offers it to her. Feeling nine different kinds of upset, she wipes her eyes with it and watches the purple pocket square turn nearly black, glistening with borrowed blood. “Moreover, it’s a decision you can make in your own time. There’s no real rush, as long as you stay close to the house and feed regularly.”

Pocket square clenched in her fist, she stares hard at the spotless carpet, trying to sense the lie in his words. There isn’t one, but she still listens for it. Lies of convenience, lies of omission…

“I should warn you, the process can be… intimate. All it necessarily involves is you drinking my blood, but most people who form a belated Sire-fledgling bond report an elevated mood, sudden feelings of emotional attachment, and an ongoing desire to pursue a sexual relationship.”

It just couldn’t be simple, could it? She takes an unneeded breath and waits for the tide of vindication, anxiety, and, yes, arousal to abate. Then she says, “If I say no, you’ll still be the city’s vampire sheriff or whatever. Are you going to hold it against me?”

“That is a very legitimate concern,” he says, as though he’s not offended at all. “I hope you can believe me when I say, no, I will not hold it against you in the least. It’s your choice. I wouldn’t give it to you if I found either option unacceptable.”

With that, he rises and walks her up to the second story, noting apropos of nothing, “There is a certain mourning period, for one’s old life.”

“What’s there to mourn?” Irreverent as she says it, she can’t help thinking that he’s right: waking up from a good long sleep, hearing rats scuttle along the street without being even vaguely tempted to snack on them, JFK, stressing out about her first gray hair at age twenty…

It’s stupid, but she’s going to miss that stuff. She’s going to miss it _because_ it’s stupid.

He pulls open a door to reveal a nice, green-wallpapered room, with a big bed and a semicircular window overlooking the driveway. “Bathroom’s down the hall, first door on your left.”

She plunks her bag down in front of the cherrywood dresser and says, “Thanks, Count Chocula. I think I can take it from here.”

 

*

 

If nothing else, she does not go hungry in the following week. This brave new world is filled with blodplattar pancakes smeared with jam and thick white noodles floating in czarnina soup. For the first time ever, she eats nam tok not for the bean sprouts, but because it's red and spicy and thickened with mallard’s blood. She has always hated, _hated_ black pudding but now she can taste all of the complexities in it: the fatty flavor of its crisp edges, the blood simply bursting from it, how happy a life that pig had lived.

Also, the baths here are pretty great. She hadn't had a bubble bath since she was twelve and wow, has she been missing out.

There is a distinct and--if she’s being totally honest with herself--disappointing lack of blood orgies. And the most scandalous thing in the drawing room is a print of Demeter, Persephone, and Hecate with her tits poking out of her see-through toga. Skye envies her confidence.

In fact, Skye is wandering into the drawing room one Saturday to admire Hecate’s tits some more when she runs into Simmons taking tea there, paging through her grimoire in a patch of sunlight. “Skye!” she says, pinkie raised as she sips from a delicate cup. “Lovely to see you.”

“Yup, it’s lovely old me.” Which kind of gets Skye’s wheels turning: is Coulson’s merry band of misfits this nice to all of the charity cases passing through here? “Hey, I was wondering. Why haven’t I seen any other fledglings? Where are all of the other strays?” she asks, sounding like the perennial orphan child that she is at her core.

“What? No, no, you misunderstand. Coulson only takes a fledgling once every couple centuries. The rest of the time, he does his best to match unattended fledglings with a Sire who, you know, suits their needs and personalities and so on. No one ever stays here for more than a couple nights, until they can go to their new Sire or their new Sire can come to them.”

The house begins to shake ever so slightly around them, rattling Simmons’ saucer and making Skye think they’re in an earthquake. “Fiz got started without me!” Simmons bursts out, looking half outraged and half excited. She all but flies from the room, leaving Skye to wonder: Coulson never even mentioned passing her off to another Sire. Is that because she’s hopeless and nobody else would ever agree to take her on, or is it because she’s… special?

She kicks at the leg of one of the fancy chairs, thinking about Coulson’s offer for the hundredth time. She could always use an _elevated mood_. And as for emotional attachment--well shit, she’s already plenty emotionally attached, isn’t she? He’s nice to her and he gives her lots of space, but also goes out of his way to talk to her once a day just to see how she’s doing and to teach her how to be Vampirella and stuff. Plus, he feeds her really well and everybody here seems so comfortable around him. Like they actually trust him, rather than simply needing his help or being locked into serfdom or something.

The sexual relationship part would be a perk. He seems like he’d be a very attentive partner, and he’s got those long, careful fingers…

 _Why_ is she thinking about sex right now? Her brain is struggling with her new life as much as her changing body is, she guesses. It's like going through puberty all over again, except with less acne and exponentially more blood. “Boy trouble” now includes irreversible blood-pacts with fellow immortals, though. So there’s that.

 

*

 

Coulson isn’t actively trying to recruit her or anything, but it turns out he doesn’t have to. Because what really sells her on it is when Fitz explodes the basement a bit. The shaking that took hold of the house only lasted for an hour, and the rest of the next two days were filled with translucent smoke wafting up through the floorboards and Fitz-Simmons having to be dragged out of the lab and up to meals. They still haven’t showed for Saturday brunch by noon, so Skye takes a plate of scrambled eggs and spicy hash-browns down to the basement; figuring that whatever they’re doing, they probably shouldn’t do it fatigued and half-starved.

The trouble is immediately apparent when she knocks on the basement door and Fitz wedges the door open just enough to talk to her, flecked with purple goo and gasping, “Don’t tell Simmons!”

“Ooookay,” Skye agrees, then hoists the plate and says, “Eggs?”

“Yes, thank you,” he says, grabbing the fork and shoveling them into his mouth as he glances over her shoulder, as if to make sure the coast is clear.

"Just to be clear, what am I not supposed to tell Simmons?”

“Nothing,” he says through a mouthful of potatoes, looking hunted. A ripping sound comes from behind him, as if a page is being torn from an infinite book. “Shite.” His eyes go wide, and before he can turn around, there is gold dust billowing out of the basement, stinging their eyes and pushing outward with enough force to shove them away from the door. And then-- _BOOM. KROOM. BA-BA- **BOOM.**_

“ _Goat’s blood!”_ Simmons is raging twenty minutes later, pacing in front of where Fitz is miserably slumped on the couch. "Of all the risky, last-minute ingredients--!”

“It’s important that we take everyone’s safety into account when conducting this kind of research,” Coulson says, in perfect counterpoint. Calmly, empathetically. He strikes a good balance between May’s glowering from the corner, Skye’s ambivalence, and Simmons’ furious lecturing.

It’s Coulson’s house, but he’s yet to disparage Fitz for the property damage. Or for being an idiot. Or his ability to make decisions in general. Skye is bewildered by it, observing it all from the recliner where she’s still trying to rub away the gold dust clinging to her eyelashes. And then it strikes her as a sad thing to be bewildered by--that she'd expect cruelty and abasement for a slip-up that Fitz obviously already feels bad about.

Coulson is such a well-mannered monster that she's starting to suspect he's not much of a monster at all.

 

*

 

She makes her decision at three in the afternoon, one weekend later, when she’s trying to skip stones across the grass like it’s a lake.

Fitz’s punishment and humiliation--it never came. Not later that day, not anytime that week. No one questioned his right to be here because he fucked up. Nobody told him that he was testing the limits of their patience or that he wasn’t worth the resources he was taking up or that one more strike could put him out on the curb. They wanted to make sure he was okay. They wanted him to understand where he’d went wrong. They wanted to get on with the business of being a family, of cleaning up the mess and starting the next experiment.

Skye can’t deny that it makes her feel vastly better about her own chances of being abandoned the minute she does something Coulson doesn’t like.

He just... he just wants to  _take care_  of her; she can see that now. Even if she is the archetypal orphan girl with a string of resentments toward authority figures who have failed her one way or another. Also, an attitude problem. But he doesn’t mind her attitude. He likes it. He likes _her_. She knows because he smiles at her--really smiles--at least once every day and Simmons always looks curious when she sees that, like it’s not an ordinary thing. And that’s good, because Coulson is no ordinary thing to her either.

She wants to be with him more than she wants to crawl into her van and pretend like she’s already dead.

She wants to cozy up to him and cuddle with him, even when there’s no blood-fueled euphoria to blame it on.

She could live for a thousand years and never meet anybody quite like him. Perhaps, in a much more literal fashion, he feels the same way about her. There’s really only one way to find out.

Well. That settles it, then.

She unlocks her van and clambers inside for the first time in a week. She takes a purposeful breath just to get a taste of its stale, familiar air and plucks her little hula girl off of the dashboard. When she gets back to her room after dinner, hours later, she sticks it to the center of the windowsill.

Home is where the hula is.

 

*

 

It takes her four more hours to convince herself to go talk to him. After dozens of mental pep-talks and way too much practicing in front of the mirror, Skye creeps up to the third story, listening to the crinkle of paper in her pocket all the way. She sends a muddled, wordless prayer to the goddesses in the drawing room and knocks on his bedroom door.

He answers within moments, wearing one of his flawless suits minus the jacket and tie. If he’s surprised to see her, he doesn’t let it show. Skye’s never been in his bedroom before, but it turns out to be a solid blood-drinking atmosphere. It’s got windows in basically every direction, the curtains already half-drawn as he offers her the settee across from where he’d been doing taxes or something in a leather chair. As soon as they’re both seated, she blurts out, “I want you to be my Sire.”

Coulson goes still all over.

His irises begin to glow a banked, throbbing red. Then he leans closer and asks quietly, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she says, telling her nervousness to go fuck itself because, underneath all of that stillness, Coulson actually looks pretty excited.

“Alright, then,” he says, smiling softly like he’s trying not to spook her. “Would you like to do this now?”

“Hell yeah, I wanna do it now. We don’t have forever,” she answers, honestly unsure of how sarcastic she’s being.

They both stand at the same moment, and Coulson looks confused, obviously expecting to join her on the settee. Skye smiles to herself because she likes surprising him, she truly does. She sits down on the edge of his bed and pats the spot next to her. He walks over slowly and the bed dips as he settles beside her. And then they look at each other, his eyes so very red and the lamps turning everything else a low gold. Something about just being with him here in the quiet is making her feel… it’s making her feel.

“It can be overwhelming,” he tells her. “You’ll want to have your back up against something, or you’ll want to be horizontal.” Skye can’t tell him that she _already_  wants to be horizontal with him, so she just scoots up the bed, fluffs some pillows, and flops back against them. Coulson unlaces his shoes and toes them off the way she’s sure he does every night, but he’s probably as thrown by the fact that she’s in his bed as Skye is. He unbuttons the upper half of his dress shirt matter of factly, enough to show the undershirt beneath it.

Then he moves all the way up the bed until he’s sitting next to her, back against the pillows. It feels good and right and natural for her to shift closer to him. To wrap her arms around him and rest her head on his shoulder. His arm comes around her and he turns to look at her looking at him. He’s eaten dinner very recently; she can tell from warmth of him, from how very alive he seems. She’d almost expect a pulse at his neck. Ignoring that, though, it’s a very nice one. Thick, with shadows draped over his adam’s apple, a prominent vein here or there.

She must have sat there staring at it for awhile because he looks kind of entertained as he reaches out, neatly extends one claw on his index finger with a snick--oh wow, when is she going to learn how to do that--and reaches up to the side of his neck. He makes a quick little cut, red dribbling out of it before he even pulls his hand away.

Her breath catches.

God, that smells heavenly. It smells the way the night looks--dark and heavy and promising things. Skye moves close enough tuck her face against his neck, to lap up that bead of blood before it stains his shirt. His blood deep and rich and velvet poured onto her tongue and she is moaning and latching onto him hard to get more of it. She seals her mouth over the cut and sucks, wrapping both of her legs around one of his.

She would never have believed how good this feels if someone else told her. The act alone is satisfying in ways that she can't even begin to quantify. The taste is something else entirely. He strokes her hair and makes reassuring noises at her that should patronizing and off-putting, but instead just kind of add to the pleasure of glutting herself on him.

For the first time in over a month, she feels flushed and alive again. How long has she been gulping him down? It’s impossible to tell when it feels like she’s been doing this forever, like she’ll do it forever after, too. She suspects that she couldn’t drink him dry even if she wanted. Coulson doesn’t seem worried about it, since he’s got a hand threaded into her hair, cupping her head like he wants to keep her there. His crisp dress shirt rustles under her hands, a sound so quiet that she can barely hear it. It’s only then that Skye realizes how loud she’s been moaning, the sound barely muffled by a full mouth. She belatedly hopes that there’s no one else sleeping on this floor because if there is, they are definitely getting an earful. But it’s not her fault, really. Anybody would make some noise, experiencing this.

If cow’s blood makes her feel warm, then this… this makes her feel whole.

When her insides ache with fullness, she finally convinces herself to stop. Her mouth leaves the cut, but she doesn’t go far. She licks it, basking in that last burst of pleasure--so deep that it’s black, so bright that it’s unreal. Skye watches the wound close, centimeter by centimeter. When that skin has fastened itself back together again, she kisses the spot, lips brushing over it as she drags her palms over his sides, her breasts now pressed against his chest and their legs tangled together.

“I think I just discovered the fountain of youth,” she breathes. Huh. She kind of breathes a lot for a vampire, doesn’t she?

Coulson chuckles and Skye thumbs the corner of her mouth to make sure she hasn’t made a mess. Then she props her chin on his chest and asks, “Was it good for you?”

He looks down at her. And nods, silently but wholly candid. His hand circles her wrist, thumb rolling over the vein just barely visible where it forks before her palm. Lovingly. Like he wants touch it without any skin in the way.

And Skye… Skye’s got more than enough blood to share, now.

“Take it," she breathes, honesty bursting from her seams. "I want you to have it."

He stares at her with solemn eyes and says, “There’s nothing I’d like more. But I can’t do that, not responsibly. The rush of feeding can influence your decisions more than you might realize--”

She slips the pre-written note out of her pocket and hands it to him, watching him read it: _Phil Coulson, please drink my blood_.

Amusement, amazement, and incredulity chase each other across his face. He looks like he’s about to laugh or maybe grill her for details on when, exactly, she wrote that, but instead he just ends up shaking his head. He’s very subdued, for a lord of the night.

He turns to her, his eyes glowing properly when he says, “It would be my honor.”

He tips them over, Skye spilling onto the sheets and him hovering over her with his fingers still wrapped around her wrist. The anticipation builds as he licks his lips in an oddly thorough way and places a kiss there, just below her palm. It slowly begins to tingle, foaming up into a blissful numbness that spreads from her fingers to her elbow. But the rest of her feels twice as alive as she watches his fangs drop, fascinated. Man, this is so cool. She can’t wait until she masters all of this vampire stuff because Coulson looks so chill, so in control as he bends over her wrist and bites. She can’t feel anything from it but a hot rush of pleasure, distant but welcome. He takes genteel sips from her wrist, eyes closed in apparent pleasure.

The minutes pass, dream-like, as he drinks from her in his very Coulson-like way. Not a single a single drop wasted. Gently. Politely. She imagines what it would be like for him to be impolite, for him to take it from her throat, from high on her thigh, from her breast. He makes a low, premonitory sound against her wrist, no doubt tasting myriad chemical signals of arousal in her blood. He must be able to taste himself there, too. There's something pleasantly circular about it, him drinking her drinking him.

He stops when he stops; she couldn’t say how long that takes. Skye can definitely feel that she’s got less blood in her, but not to the point of discomfort, by the time he retracts his fangs. Then his tongue is sweeping over her wrist and she groans in appreciation, heat flashing through her as the numbness begins to dissipate. When the two fang marks have healed themselves, Coulson kisses that stretch of skin again. Then he smoothly shifts to lie beside her, and she can tell he feels as languid and sated as she does by the way he moves.

She crawls right back into his space, her arms around his chest and the rest of her pressed right up against him. Coulson returns the favor, running his hands over her back and twining their legs together again. He holds her like he means it. Like she's a gift.

She feels so connected to him, and not just because they're wound around each other like a ball of yarn. It's like he's emitting a frequency that's steadily moving through her, that's making her brain tell her: _joy! Joy! Joy!_

It all seems twice as real, the stuff they’ve just done, when she sees a few spots of blood dotting the sheets, left by the hand Coulson had used to cut himself. His shirt is now thoroughly wrinkled, rippling under her cheek.

She sighs contentedly and says, “So, what do I taste like?”

"Iron-rich. Sweet. Airy. Light on the tongue, but heavy in the throat. Heady." He traces the length of her spine, her clothing making soft sounds of resistance as he reaches the small of her back and starts working his way higher again. "I hope you won't be offended if I say that I wish I could have tasted you before you were turned."

She considers getting offended and then tosses the urge aside in favor shrugging, "Right back at you, Coulson." It's true. He tastes so good--not that she can wax poetic about it the way he can--and she can’t help but be curious about what he'd tasted like back in ye olden days. Because she has no doubt that the last time his heart beat, electricity hadn't been invented yet. And possibly the steamboat.

A question resurfaces through the haze of self-satisfaction. “Have you ever--” she swallows against a yawn. “Have you ever met anybody like me before?”

He’s wearing that expression again, that one crossed between _I can’t believe you just said that_  and simple fondness. “No,” he says. “Definitely not.”

“Good.” 

And it is good. It’s all good.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, they don’t make out at the end and for that, I am sorry. They’re taking it slow and I couldn't bring myself to force it.
> 
> In conjunction with further research, I used this article (http://modernfarmer.com/2014/12/blood-whats/) to explore… a rather macabre genre of cuisine. 
> 
> Just a heads up, I’ve got another Skye/Coulson story in the works (as in, I’ve been messing around with it for like two years). Let me know what ya’ll thought of this! I’m always interested to see what people take away from my work.


End file.
